Remains of an Altar

‘What happened?’

‘Bugger-all, ’cos I jumped off quick this time and wheeled the bike along till I got on the main road.’

‘Just to get this right, this is the hill where you come out of this lane, at the church, and then go past the Rectory … down past there.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Could you just tell me … when you were feeling his thoughts, what were they like?’

‘Dark, usually,’ Hannah said. ‘Angry.’

‘Angry with you?’

‘No. He doesn’t know me. I’m sure he doesn’t. He just gets into my space. It’s like he just needs somebody’s space to get into, and it doesn’t matter who you are.’

‘So who was he angry at?’

‘Something bigger than me. Everything. God? I couldn’t say.’

‘And the time something touched your leg…’

‘You’re thinking it might’ve been a leaf or something, aren’t you? That’s what I thought. And I’m not going to insist it wasn’t. I just know what it felt like. Are you married, Merrily? You are allowed to, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, you are. And I used to be.’

‘Join the club. All I’m trying to say … when you’re in bed with a bloke, right? And you wake up and he’s still asleep … but his hand’s sliding up your nightie? Like that. Shall we have a cup of tea? Tea’s better on a hot day, sometimes.’

Merrily smiled. ‘Love one.’

Hannah stood up and opened the sliding door into a kitchen that must once have been part of the same room.

‘Blokes, eh?’ She looked over her shoulder at Merrily. ‘Hand up your nightie and dead to the world.’

9 Mutated

Walking out of Hannah’s gate into the warmth of the afternoon, Merrily felt mixed emotions circling her like bees: primarily, a certain wild excitement that was close to the edge of fear. You realized how much time you spent coasting the safe surf between the hard sandbank of scepticism and the unfathomable deep blue abyss.

She stepped down through the cutting, with the church on her left and the sun in her eyes and the phone chiming in her bag. Aware of the layers of Wychehill. The layers of experience.

‘The Royal Oak,’ Sophie said, as she reached the Volvo. ‘Some things you might want to know.’

‘Go on.’

‘I have some information from the Internet which I can send to you at home, if you aren’t coming back to Hereford. However, I ran into Inspector Bliss and took the liberty of mentioning it. He said he’d be most interested to talk to you.’

‘About the Royal Oak?’

‘Discreetly,’ Sophie said.

It was probably worth going back. Merrily had a christening in Ledwardine tomorrow afternoon; if she dealt with parish business in the morning she could probably come back here on Wednesday and talk to Tim Loste and Preston Devereaux before the public meeting.

Feeling tired now. Up before six a.m. and two trips to Wychehill, and she hadn’t eaten yet.

Still … She smoked half a cigarette, then turned the car around and drove down past Ledbury … Trumpet … Stoke Edith. Midsummer in a couple of days, the first hard little apples like green nuts on the twisty trees and the hops on the wires. A potent landscape of cider and beer.

She felt light-headed. It was humbling and slightly shocking when, amongst all the self-delusion and the wishful thinking and the mind games, you encountered someone as guilelessly direct as Hannah Bradley.

Sophie said, ‘My attempts to log on to the Royal Oak’s actual website were frustrated by the inadequacy of our software. Apparently, the Diocese has failed to provide us with something called Flash Seven.’

‘Anything to save a few quid.’

‘From what I’ve been reading about the Royal Oak elsewhere, I’m quite grateful we don’t have it. There you are. You may understand some of this.’

Merrily went round the desk to peer at the screen over Sophie’s shoulder.

HIP-HOP … RAGGA … GARAGE … HOUSE…

DRUM’N’BASS … BHANGRA…

… IN THE MALVERNS?

Believe it!!! A big old country pub – used to

be all darts matches and Rotary Club –

has mutated…

‘My first experience of nightclub websites, I confess.’ Sophie said.

‘You surprise me.’

‘To save you some time, this establishment is just across the boundary into Worcestershire – and out of the diocese. Another good reason not to get involved.’

Sophie scrolled up to uncover a picture of a bejewelled black man called DJ Xex. Instantly dismissing him with a contemptuous flick of the mouse.

‘It appears that the Royal Oak is now owned by a Mr Khan – apparently quite a well-known entrepreneur in the West Midlands?’

Sophie glanced at Merrily, who shook her head. Never heard of him.

‘Quite a number of local press reports about local people calling on the appropriate authority to have Mr Khan’s licence withdrawn. I’ve printed them out for you.’

‘But you didn’t print the picture of DJ Xex for the noticeboard?’

‘This would be less amusing to you, Merrily,’ Sophie said, ‘if you had to live with it.’

Possibly true. All the innocent fun of inner-city club-land in the romantic Malverns: punters swarming in every weekend from the teenage wastelands, cars screaming through the village at one a.m., windows open, boom, boom, boom. Kids stopping to throw up in front gardens, relieve themselves in the churchyard. Have sex on graves … allegedly. And now a fatal road accident of the kind that people always insisted had been waiting to happen.

‘Sounds as if the victims of Saturday’s crash had spent the evening at the Royal Oak.’ Merrily gathered up the on-line news stories Sophie had printed. ‘Colliding with the chairman of the parish council, returning from a wedding.’

Sophie winced.

The stories were mainly from the Malvern Gazette: petitions to Hereford and Worcester councils, letters to MPs. Counter-allegations of NIMBYism and racism by the leader of a youth project who thought the restyled Royal Oak was the best thing to happen in the Malverns this century.

‘What did Frannie Bliss say?’

‘We didn’t have much time to talk. He asked how you were, and I explained that you were looking into an alleged occurrence at the eastern end of the diocese and then simply asked if he knew anything about the Royal Oak.’

‘Or, as it’s now apparently called…’

‘Don’t.’